3 ESR (PhD) positions in Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie

Job description

The emerging knowledge economy relies increasingly on Big-data applications to extract value out of huge amounts of data by searching for correlations that can be used to predict business trends, find the best medical treatment for diseases, perform financial risk management, determine the best locations to drill for oil and gas, fight crime, and for many other purposes. Big-data applications are very different from traditional workloads and put extremely high demands on the High Performance Computing (HPC) systems that are used to execute them. One of the key challenges in designing new generations of HPC systems that can keep up with the ever-growing data volumes, is that current technological trends prevent large amounts of data to be transferred at acceptable power dissipation costs. Reducing expensive data transfers by ‘bringing computation closer to the data’, also known as near-memory computing, has emerged as a very promising solution to address this scaling issue in HPC systems in order to realize the Exascale computing systems that are required for handling future Big-data workloads. Near-memory computing, however, is still in its infancy, and many challenges have to be addressed before it can be established as an integral component of HPC systems.

NeMeCo is an ambitious Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Industrial Doctorates (EID) Innovative Training Network (ITN) programme, which addresses several of the above challenges. In particular, NeMeCo is an interdisciplinary training and research project aimed at developing power-efficient HPC systems for Big-data processing based on the exploitation of near-memory computing capabilities, and, in this way, making the world a better place by enabling important innovations in, for example, healthcare, energy consumption, traffic congestion and safety.

NeMeCo involves a three-partner network comprising the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, IBM Research GmbH in Switzerland, and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, ASTRON. These partners provide a unique combination of academic and industrial expertise of Big-data applications, compilers, memory and processor technology, and high-performance computer architecture. NeMeCo offers early stage researchers (ESRs) an excellent multidisciplinary training program at the cross roads of hardware and software design, where complex trade-offs have to be made between performance, programmability and energy efficiency. A board of 8 experienced supervisors will work together across disciplines and sectors to train and mentor the ESRs who will have access to superb research facilities at all locations. A total of three individual PhD projects are available

ESR1: Run-time optimization

ESR2: Compiler technology

ESR3: Near-memory processor design

These three projects complement each other to cover the wide spectrum of aspects related to the following research objectives that build upon each other:

Analysis of Big data workloads, their key algorithms, their complexity in terms of memory, compute and I/O operations, their data locality, their parallelization potential, their mappings to various platforms, possible algorithmic optimizations, etc. The purpose is to obtain a detailed understanding of their characteristics, and their static and dynamic processing requirements (ESR1+2+3).

Modelling of selected Big data workloads, modelling of conventional computer architectures and of potential novel architectures based on near-memory computing, and modelling of the mapping of the workloads on those architectures. Objective is to enable a huge design space exploration, but still with sufficient detail based on accurate predictions of power consumption and performance (ESR1+2+3).

Development of techniques for partitioning, mapping, and compiling Big data workloads on a hybrid HPC system combining conventional processing elements with near-memory computing capabilities (ESR2). Development of techniques for run-time optimization of the performance and power consumption (ESR1). Development of a system-level and accelerator level architecture for a near-memory computing device integrated into a hybrid HPC system (ESR3).

Realization of a near-memory computing tool set and ecosystem including compiler, debugger, performance analysis, and run-time optimization tools (ESR1+2), and a near-memory computing device implementation in a hardware description language (ESR3).

Translation of the expertise, models, tools and architecture, into a small-scale demonstrator of a computing system supporting near-memory computing (ESR1+2+3). This demonstrator will be integrated into an emerging ecosystem for HPC technologies, which increases the commercial relevance of the developed near-memory computing tool set and architecture while, at the same time, allowing evaluation of its application to a wide range of real-world problems. The latter is a key element of the proposed cutting-edge research program and will be instrumental for realizing break-through innovations.

The training is structured individually for each ESR based on a personal career development plan which covers scientific, personal and transferable skills. The ESRs will be employed for an initial period of three years by the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, which will also award the PhD degrees. If successful, the employment will be extended by a fourth year. Each ESR will do secondments at IBM Research GmbH in Switzerland (for about 20 months) and at ASTRON in the Netherlands (for about 4 months).

As part of the NeMeCo project, the three ESRs will have access to an exceptionally wide range of state-of-the-art server and supercomputing technologies, including an on-site BlueGene BG/Q system, a collection of OpenPOWER hardware, various commercial GPUs, FPGAs, and DSPs, as well as technologies that are not on the market yet, such as the world’s first hot water cooled 64-bit microserver 1 and an accelerator platform that is based on the direct attachment of FPGAs to the memory interconnect of a commercial server processor 2.

In addition, the DOME project 3 , in which ASTRON and IBM jointly perform fundamental research on large-scale green Exascale computing for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, offers the ESRs a unique opportunity to get experience with an ‘extremely Big’-data application, involving the processing of Exabytes of astronomical data collected by hundreds of thousands of antennas and dishes for exploring the universe. The SKA will become the biggest radio telescope on earth requiring enormous compute power when it becomes operational in the next decade.

Requirements

We are looking for highly motivated candidates having a master’s degree with excellent grades in a relevant field (e.g. Computer Science, Electrical Engineering). Also required are solid programming skills (e.g., in C or C++) and good English proficiency. According to the Marie-Curie regulations, candidates shall, at the time of recruitment, be in the first four years of their research careers, and have not been awarded a doctoral degree. They also must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the Netherlands for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately preceding the time of recruitment.

Conditions of employment

a challenging job in a dynamic and ambitious university and a stimulating internationally renowned research environment;

full-time temporary appointment for 3 years, which will be extended with one year if it is successful;

a detailed curriculum vitae, a letter of motivation and portfolio with relevant work;

a cover letter explaining your motivation and suitability for the position;

a detailed Curriculum Vitae (including a list of publications and key achievements in research project(s));

contact information of two references;

copies of diplomas with course grades;

Candidates will be selected based on graduation mark and proficiency at university including consideration of the reputation of the university, relevant experience and skills, writing skills and publications, work experience as well as performance in relevant modelling exercises and interviews.

Applications from women, who are currently under-represented in this area, will be particularly welcome. If male and female candidates have the same qualifications, preference will be given to female candidates.

Please note that applications for all three projects are allowed. Please list the projects in order of interest in your application.

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External Vacancies

Electronic Design Engineer - TechnoCentrum Nijmegen

A job opening for master-level engineers at he TechnoCentrum from the Radboud University in Nijmegen as Electronic Design Engineer. Please refer to the attached document for further details.

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2 Embedded Software Developer positions at Accerion

Accerion is a fast growing robotic startup, developing a new technology to determine the position of mobile robots and AGV without the need of external infrastructures.

The sensor developed by Accerion results from the combination of advanced computer vision algorithms, modern heterogeneous processing platforms and advanced hardware components.

Accerion is looking for software developers who want to be part of a young and enthusiastic team building a great product with unique value for the industry.

Ideal team members are excited about:

Working in a high-tech robotics startup, as part of a young and enthusiastic team

2 PhD positions at the University of Córdoba

There are 2 PhD positions available in GPU and heterogeneous computing at the University of Córdoba for an European H2020 Marie Curie ITN project called HiPerNav (High Performance soft-tissue Navigation, project duration 01.11.2016-31.10.2020).

The PhD students will work on GPU and heterogeneous computing for image registration, and for enhancement and denoising of pre-operative and intra-operative images.

The scientific and clinical goal of HiPerNav is to develop a navigation platform for management of liver cancer and metastases treatment to improve the eligibility and prognosis for liver surgical procedures and ablation treatment, enabling an integral management of surgical workflow:

pre-operative surgical planning

intra-operative resection navigation and ablation monitoring

post-operative quality control

Requirements for the applicants are strong background in Computer Architecture, parallel programming, and GPU programming. In addition, good English proficiency is necessary. More details can be found here:https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/156209

Two postdoc opportunities at Imperial College London

Two postdoc opportunities working at the interface between heterogeneous parallel compilers and architectures, and 3D scene understanding.

2 PhD Positions in Amsterdam

The iDAPT project will focus on run-time monitoring, analyzing, simulating and steering the extra- functional behavior (EFB) of complex, networked real-time computer systems. EFB is a general term that encompasses all the behavior of a computer system not primarily encoded in the source code of its software, like performance, throughput, fault rates, total memory usage, disk I/O, etc. The proposed approach in this project is to model and simulate the system at a high level of abstraction, and perform run-time monitoring and analysis of EFB while the system is operating. These abstract simulation system models will need to be made ‘auto-calibrating’ (i.e., they are calibrated at run time) and should allow for predicting – using e.g. machine-learning techniques – how the EFB will evolve over time and, if needed, to propose operating-system based countermeasures to control the EFB according to requirements of the system (components). The proposed methodology will provide a breakthrough in EFB management of complex, networked computer systems.

For more information and contact details please see the attached pdf document.